The 8th Ho Chi Minh City IT Awards ceremony was held by the Department of Information and Communications in November 25th. This is an official award issued by Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee and held annually since 2008

MANAGING THE COMMUNICATION CRISIS WITH SOCIAL LISTENING

1. Transporting mechanisms of communication crisis

Communication crisis is negative information about the brand spread into media, which is damage to reputation and finance of the brand. In recent years, the development of social media not only brings to many opportunities for branding but also begins original source for the first phases on the communication crisis.

The communication crisis usually has three phases: smoldering, buzz and spreading.

In the smoldering phase, the crisis has not really started. A little complaint of customer on social media has begun the buzz of this stage.

The crisis broke out when official media joining with highly frequency. Double crisis occur when the brand does not has satisfied response. The spread of communication crisis occur at the moment which many fan pages has a big fans joined and invited their friends to like, share and comment.

2. Management process of communication crisis

In general, the Management Process consists of three main steps: preparation, warning, and monitoring in which preparation (planning) is an extremely important step, but it often overlooked. When a crisis has not happened, preparation includes planning for circumstance crisis and practicing steps in order to the crisis team will be set up quickly and immediate, consistent and accurate response if the crisis really happened.

Preventing communication crisis before it happens:

Most crises have unpredictable and difficult to prevent before but it is warned by the following signs:

The increasing number of discussions and articles about the brand:

The increasing number of discussions came from many sources which include positive and negative discussion. However, as we know that, the most communication crisis originally started from negative information and exploding into crisis just after a short time. The increasing number of discussion not always as a signs of crisis but it also contains a certain probability. Therefore, the brand should notice this change to prevent the communication crisis before it happened.

The article from high influent sources:

Articles on the website often have highly frequency. Although these articles often do not get as many replies as they could on forums and social networks, they have a great influence on the internet community, especially from official media. Articles published with negative information that will be quickly shared into social media and faster to become a real communication crisis. Therefore, the articles on the highly frequency website should always be followed and timely tracking negative information which aim to prevent widely spread.

There are many online newspapers where started communication crisis of that FMCG so brand needed to closely followed:

VietQ.vn

VTC.vn

Dantri.vn

Tienphong.vn

Tuoitre.vn

VnEpxress.net

Vietnamnet.vn

24h.com.vn

Baomoi.vn

ZingNews

Soha

Articles on large fan page / private pages of highly influential people

These pages usually have large followers, from few thousand to hundreds of thousands of followers. Therefore, the negative information from these social networking sites should be detected immediately and have quickly feedback.

Warning the risk of communication crisis

The Social Listening system can be set up to send alert email or SMS immediately to the brand. The warnings include negative information such as serious negative discussions or articles, negative posts that have high frequency or interactivity, and the articles has higher negative discussion than positive…

The warning of the occurrence of communication crisis may also be based on negative discussions that contain related keywords to serious issues or issues that the brand has previously encountered, or a common problem to communication crisis in the goods (based on the research in the goods).

Tracking the communication crisis when it happened

The most important thing to deal with communication crisis is a suitable, consistent and timely response. If the brand does not have timely feedback, it will quickly spread and increasingly difficult to prevent. Meanwhile, if the brand feedback an unreasonable response in a sensitive time so that it can lead to double crisis, as a customers will turn away or even boycott of the brand.

The communication crisis was able to effective management if the brand knew that how is brand being negative discussion on social media, where was the crisis occur, and who was participated this? In this case, social listening is an efficient tool to help the brand control for communication crisis quickly and most effectively.

Updating the issues is being negative discussion

Updating what the issues of the brand is being negative discussion on the social media in order to the brand can keep track status and get solution.

Know where negative discussions are being made

Once the communication crisis occurs and a series of news and articles are shared across social media channels that attracts the attention and participation of online community discussion so searching, tracking, and responding of those negative information is extremely difficult for brands. The social listening tool with the ability to statistic the most talked-about sources, especially the negative discussion, and allow filtering out these discussions for feedback, which will help brands extinguish the communication crisis faster and more effective.

Estimate the reach of the communication crisis

Reach shows how many times the communication crisis of brands has been visited and through which social media channels. This indicates the severity of the crisis and what sources are the main sources of crisis spread so that the brand can reach and handle.

Know who is discussing in the brand’s communication crisis

Analysis audience profile who are discussing negatively about the brand on social allows the brand to know who they are, the age, gender, area of living, etc., from which to study behavior as well as their discussion trend to provide reasonable feedback. In addition, knowing the people who are discussing negatively about the brand also helps brands quickly communicate and work out the most effective solution.

Track through the Social Media Command Center

Once the communication crisis occurs, the Social Media Command Center can be instantly installed (compatible with the TV screen) to allow for real-time monitoring and analysis of factors such as share of voice, brand health, discussions/news, profile of the participants, etc., to help the brand manage discussions of users and crisis handling.

Handling when communication crisis occurs

Once the communication crisis has taken place, the negative information about the brand has been spread on social media and now what brands can do is neutralizing the negative discussions, or in other words, reduce the negative level or negative rate of branding. There are two main ways to handle communication crisis technically: counteracting and neutralizing.

Protesting is the matter of contacting and requesting postings removal. if the article contains misleading or intentional misrepresentation of the brand and has signs of unfair competition or legal offense.

Post-neutralization is the method used when contacting and requesting an unsuccessful page removal. This is done in a neutral and positive way of writing about the correct information or branding achievements around negative posts to neutralize the reader. During the crisis, the brand needs to remind its customers of the good things they have done.